It occurred to me today that the social value of the open-source work I do in my free time has probably been an order of magnitude more useful to the world than everything I've ever done as a paid employee. Needing to seek a wage almost certainly makes me a less productive member of society than I would otherwise be.
@jsbarretto getting to work on open source for a living, and in some of my favorite projects too, has been the best experience in my career. I wish more people could, and I hope we’ll get to see more options for people to make a living in open source.
@HistoPol@tshepang I think this is a common misnomer. When it comes to basic services, it's rare that they're abused. In the UK, healthcare is free at the point of use but nobody goes for a jolly down to the local hospital. Similarly, almost nobody does the same for food banks, social benefits, etc. without good reason. I don't think that humans actually behave like classical economics would suggest (i.e: as cynical min-maxers who will readily take over the needs of others).
Apart from health care (where I tend to disagree, as the inflation rate, including innovation had been 12-15%, depending on the country, even before the Pandemic . The #NHS is in a huge crisis and even in non-Oil countries, maintaining it open for all is gigantic and access must be limited for the system not to break. - Limited regarding the scope of the services, not regarding nationals and residents.)
...which universal basic services do you see?
@HistoPol@tshepang What do you mean by 'see' exactly? I think food/healthcare/housing/water/heating/internet connection are all pretty essential for living in today's world, so I'd rather see their provision to all citizens be a statutory requirement placed upon both local and national governments.
@jsbarretto@HistoPol I would extend that to all, not just citizens, for it would be very sad to be denied such basic things for being born in the "wrong" place
@tshepang
In order for a state to take care of its citizens and (legal) residents who have to foot the bill, NO system can ever be open to all comers, as there are always limited resources.
Just have a look at the millions of war #refugees that had to be accommodated in the #EU.
Many low-income citizens and residents are already crowded out of an extremely tight housing market. Right-wing governments are already in place or might be soon. Asking for freedom...
...of movement for any human being a desirable as this may be, would simply lead to a breakdown of virtually all services provided by the state.
A case in point: the Lebanon, virtually a failed state.
No, a somewhat just solution would be that the old industrialized nations pay #ClimateReparations to the former #colonial countries, as the University of #Leeds recently suggested.
@HistoPol@jsbarretto does not have to be... modern states have great wealth, and can accommodate more than they already are, only it happens such resources are not efficiently distributed. I also would not view refugees as a burden... they too can bring value to the new society.
I strongly disagree with the "wealth" statement. Several G7 countries are greatly in debt and live on bortowed time. Many cannot even finance all that would be necessary to achieve the 1.5°C target.
Yes, of course immigrants bring new skillsets to a country. The problem arises when they become too many; just ask any surviving indigenous people of the Americas. 😉
I completely agree with the uneven wealth-distribution problem, however. In particular, the earth...
Here is an overview of the G20's and several NICa' state debts, customarily in % of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP, BIP in German.)
It shows, for how many years a country would have to use the complete monetary value of all of its goods and services generated in a year to repay their debts.
(Alas, it is in German, but most country names should be known from the Olympics.)
However, if you have read the Panama Papers, I seem to remember that e.g. Africa's wealth seems to be controlled chiefly by 3 families. (Don't quote me on that, it's been some years.)
But looking, selectively, at Russia, the US, Latin America, and many Arab countries, for instance, I'd hazard a guess: international #oligarchs.
@HistoPol@tshepang ...who only accrue the wealth that they do because the very government that owe debt to them allow them to acquire said wealth. When you zoom out and look at economies on the scale of nations, debt ceases to be of interest (and even more so if those economies control their currency). Only productive capacity matters.
You can only cancel out things within one mathematical term.
The oligarchs and the corporatists that control these debts are "extra-national," often holding several passports, and are NOT under the control of national governments (maybe with the partial exception of #Russia--different story.)
They, in turn, control Western democracies through their lobbyists and the...
@HistoPol@jsbarretto yet those refugees have overall a better life in those crowded places, which is worth the reduced comfort for those who happen to be born in the "right" place
@tshepang@jsbarretto
I can totally understand that.
I have been to such countries.
I have also been to several of the EU and all N-American countries. You underestimate the power of the right-wing movements. They recruit a lot of their followers from what might be derisively called "white trash."
People, in other words, often with a low educational background and on the losing end of the looming Age of LLMs. In many countries, more crowding out on a massive scale is simply not socially tenable
@jsbarretto@HistoPol was thinking what if food was free at the shop, where you just go and take what you need (because am a dreamer): there would perhaps be what looks like looting for some time, then people would quickly realize that's not needed, because they would go back and see the shop is still stocked
@tshepang@HistoPol There's a gardening club where I live that I've just joined, based around the local park. The vegetable garden is communal and everybody is free to plant and take whatever they like. I planted some peas and lettuce the other day and brought home a red cabbage for dinner. Even though the vegetables are square in the centre of the park, in the middle of the city, nobody abuses it. People take what they need when it's ready, but make sure to leave plenty for others.
@HistoPol@tshepang Thing is, it's not even like it's a small group. It's a city of half a million people, is one of the most popular parks in the city, and is extremely visible and on the main path through the park. Most likely 10,000 people walk past it a week, at least.
@HistoPol@jsbarretto institutions managing such services could be corrupt indeed, but there are solutions to that, like reducing movement of money (where, for example, governments would not contract private companies to do the work)
Very interesting. You thought of corruption by administrators (and rightly so, see my posts, e.g., about Nestlé and water-rights abuses, e.g., in the US and elsewhere.)
I thought more of abuse by citizens. People tend to value services that are free of charge low.
Regarding the showcase of #Scandinavian countries, they cannot be the benchmark. I'm no #anthropologist but I'd suspect that the following factors influence this result:
small, and until recently, a fairly
homogeneous population.
Rich and highly educated populations.
Centuries of common enterprise (e.g. #Viking raids.) Mist other countries lack such characteristics.
Very different: Native American tribes.
There might be other factors.
People, generally, tend to be ill-disciplined in huge crowds where individual stakeholdership and malfeasance don't lead to ostracism, as in ancient times. (My hypothesis)
@HistoPol
To augment this thought, making people pay for stuff tends towards making apparent how important that stuff is. If you give a UBI and then charge park admissions for example you could find out how much people prefer the beach park to the garden park... Or whatever. When you provide a variety of free services there isn't a way for the public to vote "a lot more of this and less of that" @tshepang@jsbarretto
@HistoPol
With an appropriate UBI we get a lot more efficient use of resources. Because money has been so corrupted by political power people tend to forget that it's purpose is actually communication it's an information transfer medium @tshepang@jsbarretto
You can't witness the degree of preference though. Suppose you have two beaches, one has better surfing. On any given day 1000 people go to both beaches. Both beaches are "equally good" right? What if I told you that the 1000 surfers would pay $40 to park there, but the 1000 other beach goers would only pay $5. It's not enough to see how many people go where to give you good information about how to allocate resources.
For example it might tell you to allocate resources to a special bus that goes to the surfing beach that can take surfboards, where you can board the bus a few miles away in some kind of parking structure, enabling more people to surf the beach without requiring us to build parking next to the beach. Just as an example.
In general there are other ways you can gain information, but money transactions makes for a single comparable measuring stick between any goods and services, do you enhance the beach, or have more concerts in the park, or have more bus transport or plant more fish in lakes or provide more educational opportunities for kids or ... having a way to compare everything (price) is vastly superior to a hodgepodge of surveys and whatnot.
The problem is we have made money be a thing you only get for working for wages etc. Suppose we start charging reasonable prices for all sorts of public goods, the linux kernel, beach access, census data... whatever. But then on the other hand, everyone gets an equal UBI of maybe $40000/yr which is more or less say twice the average cost of consuming all the public goods we started charging for. So you can buy a typical quantity of the public goods, plus $20k
The money charged for the public goods can go to public maintenance, and whatever isn't used there, can be paid out again by the govt as part of paying the UBI. you're recycling money, using it as an information-carrier. That's how it's supposed to work, to direct resources where they're needed. If you started charging for public goods you'd triple or quadruple the GDP, but to keep the consumption constant you'd need a lot more money circulation... ie the UBI
Yes, of course, this would only be a basic (=minimal) income.
Also, the big issue is not only purchasing power (dis)parities b/w countries, but b/w regions, e.g. cities and rural areas.
The #UBI would need to be converted using PPP (Purchasing Power Parities) for the basic goods defined.
Price differences are particularly huge for housing, as we all know. @dlakelan@jsbarretto
@tshepang
Of course, as mentioned $40k is just an example, thought needs to go into UBI sizing, but money is still usable in the same way so you can sell labor for wages, charge interest, invest in stocks, build rental housing etc. The point of UBI is to make sure that everyone has a minimum of some amount of income. It's probably best to think of it as a percentage of GDP/capita. Let's say 10-20% @HistoPol@jsbarretto
@dlakelan
it would need to be adjusted per individual then, because people have different needs... someone would spend too much on medical needs, and a more lucky person has more to spend on leisure @HistoPol@jsbarretto
@dlakelan
why I favor services is it equalizes those things that should be regarded human rights, like housing, health, and education, such that whatever little is offered by UBI could then go to less essential (but still important) things like leisure and art @HistoPol@jsbarretto
@tshepang
There are all sorts of discussions to be had about services vs UBI. One of the biggest issues with free services is it makes a strong value judgement about what is important. For example, if a person likes living somewhat cramped in small square footage housing but saving up money to invest in starting a hair salon... Nope, you get one size fits all housing allotment. UBI lets people allocate resources according to their preferences. @HistoPol@jsbarretto
@tshepang
Most likely there are some services where it's easier to just provide it than deal with the overhead of charging for it. How are you going to charge to sit in a community park? Erecting fences and a pay gate ruins the experience. But for something like a library it makes sense to charge a couple dollars a week to hold a book, using the funds to replace damaged volumes and maintain the building etc. @HistoPol@jsbarretto
I agree with your train of thought, except for the library. They have always been free, and I did not see people reading too many books.
#UBI doesn't mean everybody's rich and can afford everything.
Trade-off have you be made, e.g. for sick people, as they have a disproportionate share of healthcare costs.
These above-average expenditures should never crowd out literature.
Libraries should remain free for all residents.
@dlakelan
note that am in favor of UBI, and UBS (universal basic services) to me is something that would greatly help make it more effective by avoiding issues with increased incomes, like corruption and inflation (as one example, high income countries tend to have higher housing costs) @HistoPol@jsbarretto
@tshepang
I think there is plenty of meaningful discussion to have over what should be free services and what should be priced yet affordable due to UBI. In general a free service candidate is something like firefighting, police, and emergency medical. Something where few need it and it's expensive when you do. There's an insurance like quality. @HistoPol@jsbarretto
@tshepang
The corruption and inflation questions are good questions though. IMHO a transition to UBI should proceed through a gradual process. For example if we give out 10% of GDP/capita, and then slowly transition more services to payed consumption, GDP would grow and therefore UBI would grow.
Corruption needs a different solution entirely. There are plenty of services that serve the corrupt not the supposed targets. Bridges to nowhere etc. @HistoPol@jsbarretto
@dlakelan
my thinking is that reducing opportunities for money movement automatically reduces corruption (though other forms of currency could be used, like exchange of favors, which is a separate problem) @HistoPol@jsbarretto
(1/2)
That is a good thought.--As you state yourself, though, money was invented after barter trade. And none-monetary IOU's have been quite customary in many cultures.--Not saying that it is corruption, but just think of the "Legacy" anomaly at US Ivy League colleges, for instance.
People are very inventive.
Also, as seen with the price-cap discussion in many European countries during the current #EnergyWars, even...
..."rich" G20 countries cannot afford to provide unlimited price caps, so there is always room for fraud, if e.g. a company requires a lot more.
So, in reality, I think reducing the money in circulation (not even abolishing it) by providing UBS would maybe only momentarily reduce the corruption problem. People are very creative.
@HistoPol
anything that reduces harm, whether or not temporary, is welcome by me... future harms could be handled as they happen, assuming failure of preemption @dlakelan@jsbarretto
@tshepang
I disagree with that statement.
A lot of resources will be lost with trial and error, trying to find a balance.
If, in the end (I see 9mths to 3 yrs) everything re/ corruption is "back to normal," it is not worth it, I think.
@HistoPol
you would have learned what worked and what didn't, because else you are left guessing (because the real world is the best testing ground for ideas) @dlakelan@jsbarretto
@tshepang
Although the real world is the best testing grounds, I do think we proceed more quickly to a solution when the policies are relatively simple (so have few possibilities for special cases) and we have some theory that has guided us successfully in the past. I'm not a huge fan of economics as practiced today but I do think market economies when free from special treatment for the rich are pretty good. @HistoPol@jsbarretto
I used to think that way, too.
Until I found out what has really happened during the past 40-50 years.
And I am not only talking about the #GinnyCoefficient (there was an excellent pod of #TheEconomist on this topic some months ago) and the betrayal of the global population by #BigOil, or the neocolonial practices of such Robber-Barron companies like #Nestlé.
Well, I do think most of those things you decry which I also decry are examples of "special cases" created by the rich by buying government power. This is all too common though. Something needs to change.
It is not just that, alas, my post is in Germany (which I will put, regardless, afterwards,) here is a post in English about a NTY article about the unprecedented power Musk has amassed in satellite internet communications.
Final thought for 2nite regarding our discussion about UBS and housing - the markets have been failing time and again around the globe, e.g. in Germany, the US presently and soon also in Canada:
@HistoPol
I doubt anyone who has been involved in building housing projects would call those conditions "markets" it's more about which city council members to bribe or whatever. Homeowners consistently vote to exclude others by preventing housing construction etc. It's a complicated problem, usually when you see major failures like this it's indirect political class warfare that is responsible. @tshepang@jsbarretto
@HistoPol
I assume by Ivy League thing, you mean richer people have better chances of being accepted, which itself offers bigger chances of (monetary) success after graduation @dlakelan@jsbarretto
@tshepang
No, not quite, it means that even poorer, say administrative staff kids, get preferential treatment. They "inherit" an enrollment.
It perpetuates a ruling cast and does not allocate the spaces to the most gifted students with the highest pontential ROI for society.
Therefore, inherently unfair.
@HistoPol
ah, in the current world, the less wealthy have the world set up against their success, so I would rather have them get preferential acceptance in fancy institutions, but more importantly, would rather other institutions close the gap of excellence (because prestige is a form of discrimination) @dlakelan@jsbarretto
Yes, agreed. However, that raises the specter of "ideological incest," as I would call it, and here we are at a big other topic, #TESCREAL (I covered that yesterday in a repeat of some of my threads.)
I threatends the complete world order we have presently, and no, not in the way you would like it to move, but in to a complete #oligarchy. Fact.
If you listen to the interview, @timnitGebru makes it very clear that except for one black swan, all tech billionaires in #SiliconValley are (chiefly white) males that (mostly?--don't recall) belief in #TESCREAL. #SciFi, in particular certain novels, that used to be nerd stuff, has become main stream.
These two threads emanate from the influential tech billionaires and VC funds. They replicate through funding other white males, indoctrinated by this (on the one hand) fascist thought.
@HistoPol
if so, that raises another topic (of hoarding wealth), but having UBI (and UBS) would be a great start, such that I would pick anyone of the 2 than none of them @dlakelan@jsbarretto
That's an interesting theory, and I guess not without some merit. A big part of corruption is siphoning off funds by moving them into the pockets of the corrupt. But money movement also does good things, and I think they're kind of "invisible". Why when we go to the grocery is there food there to eat? Because that moves money from hungry people into grocer's pockets. Stop allowing grocers to sell food for money, and the population will starve.
@dlakelan
I can imagine a population could be fed without such grocers being involved, and this does not imply not tracking what goods have what levels of demand @HistoPol@jsbarretto
It may in theory be possible, but the history of the world says that market economies work well for things like food, and that some kind of centralized economy without utilizing the information from price and money exchange works poorly for such things as in USSR. When we talk about a demand, we need to specify a price. In some sense there is "infinite" demand for many zero price things. I'd eat a lot more sushi if it cost $0.
@dlakelan
special demands should not invalidate more basic ones, and historical examples of failure should not invalidate potential future attempts, because approaches could be different @HistoPol@jsbarretto
@tshepang
I agree, but so far, no-one has conceptualized a system that might actually work on a large scale* for human beings, at least not that I'm aware of
aka the factual "Communism" in the former Soviet Union, for instance.
Also, this is what I meant that it will not work when groups become to big.
Basically, it could be argued that a lot of the indigenous tribes of the Americas practiced a form of (working) Communism (except for the peoples with kingdoms, in particular Middle America and Peru/Bolivia.)
People are, in essence, egotistic, and no amount of governance...
@HistoPol
I have not. I did some work on Bayesian models for measuring poverty back in 2017 and had some interesting results but it didn't wind up panning out.
I have a dream of starting a nonprofit utilizing agent based modeling to address large scale social and technical issues, but do not have a clear path towards making that happen. @tshepang@jsbarretto
@HistoPol
Any model where you specify a mathematical form, with unknown free parameters and then you utilize probability as a measure of plausibility (rather than frequency of occurrence) to find which parameters "work best" is a Bayesian model. So in my poverty model the goal was to estimate a distribution across households in each locality of the ratio of income to a cost of living measure. @tshepang@jsbarretto
It would really be interesting to have a rather complete chart of (possible*) public services differentiated by "insurance-like quality" vs. "should be priced" or something.
*some services might only make sense for some countries, e.g. heating in the tropics, not sensible, but essential in northern countries. Air condition, contrary example.
@tshepang
Apart from being administratively impossible to have an individual price deflator, it is also not the correct approach. Just b/c s.o. needs or wants more, doesn't mean the public has to foot the bill.
I can see this for people with proven disabilities but not for much else. This is exactly why UBI is a great concept: more efficiency through personal choice.
@HistoPol@jsbarretto give people a free service, take it away, and see the reaction... the fight that will ensue will show just how much they value such.
Abuse may exist, but that is no reason to have others suffer. UBI is kool, but may not be enough to cover essential things like medical (in the US, but also elsewhere, to a lesser extent) and housing costs.
@jsbarretto I am extremely glad I've had the opportunity to get paid to work on nearly-exclusively free/open software in the last bunch of years.
It also has definitely paid less than other more soul-crushing opportunities, which I'm totally fine with.
There's so many neat things from "the before times" I wish I could have shared .... "but, proprietary" :(
@jsbarretto
I'm super lucky to work in a job that I believe helps people, but it took me over 10 years of work to find that place. Until then, I was definitely in your position and even worked a few places that made me feel like I was making the world worse. 😕
@jsbarretto I mostly work on projects designed to improve healthcare services for vulnerable populations. It ain't sexy, and I won't get rich, but I feel good about it.
@alcinnz It's kind of soul-destroying. Although I like my current employer, I'm constantly harassed by the hunch that very little of what I've produced in my career has been useful or even used by actual human beings. I just want to grow food, build furniture, and write open-source software.
As a retired technical writer, I think of how short-lived the usefulness of my work was. It no longer has any value at all.
The community building work I am doing now without a paycheck, though, can potentially stay useful well beyond my lifetime because of the ripple effect of building supportive relationships.
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